Was This Lightning-Struck Jujube Wood Fired by Nuclear Power?

Generations of cultural relic restorers have accumulated a considerable amount of experience in cleaning such grime.

Whether it is copper rust, iron rust, rust buried in the soil, or rust soaked out from seawater...

Classified by category, each has its own treatment plan, and a mountain of research papers has already been compiled.

Of course, Shen Le currently lacks the conditions to test the stains to see if they have a high salt or alkali content, let alone perform Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), or Infrared Spectroscopy (IR) analysis.

For now, his only option is to use the most basic methods, trying them out bit by bit to see which approach proves most effective.

Shen Le put down his flashlight, picked up a needle, and carefully probed into the crack, first picking out a tiny bit of grime from within.

Then, he lined up several bowls and placed different types of reagents into them:

Diluted white vinegar...

Diluted baking soda...

Diluted caustic soda solution...

Alcohol...

Acetone...

He dropped a bit of grime into each bowl to observe their ability to dissolve the dirt. After finishing, he looked left and right, then let out a heavy sigh:

"I need a concrete house... I need a house built of concrete... Reagents like acetone are just too dangerous in a wooden house; they are flammable, explosive, and volatile!"

Although he had been as careful as possible, placing the acetone and the bowl containing it inside a separate iron basin so that even a spill wouldn't ignite immediately, the stuff was still volatile. Storage and waste disposal required specialized methods; he couldn't just dump it down the drain!

Shen Le muttered to himself as he opened his notebook and added another long-term task. Then, he stirred the grime in each bowl to observe how they dissolved in the solvents:

"Ah, as expected, acetone is the most efficient. Sigh, I have to risk it and work with this stuff again..."

He dipped a cotton pad into the acetone, held his breath, and dripped it into the dirty wooden crack, drop by drop. Seeing the liquid gently seep into the wood until it could absorb no more, he covered the crack with the damp cotton pad and waited for the grime to slowly dissolve.

Then, he hurriedly opened the window and door and rushed out of the studio:

"Hey! Xiao Ling, don't go in there! There are flammable materials inside; be careful not to set yourself on fire!"

Why did she rush in the moment he opened a crack in the door? Those who knew she was a puppet would understand, but those who didn't might think she was a cat!

He tucked the Little Puppet under his arm and carried her far across the courtyard before taking off his gloves, washing his hands, and breathing in the fresh air. Immediately after, he pulled out his phone and placed a lightning-fast order for an industrial dust mask.

A KN95 mask could block dust, but it couldn't block organic solvent vapors!

For the sake of his own health and life, he had to breathe as little of this stuff as possible!

"Leaving the school lab to work at home makes the working conditions so difficult... I miss school, I miss the equipment and instruments at school. I think I might need a fume hood..."

"But that stuff is so expensive. Is there any way to hand-craft one..."

A fume hood was impossible to get immediately, and even if he built one by hand, it wouldn't be finished quickly—after all, he could saw the wooden boards himself, and buying glass wasn't difficult, but the most important part, the exhaust fan, still had to be sourced somehow.

For the time being, Shen Le would just have to endure the acetone with his own body.

After a while, he would lift the cotton pad to check the stains on it and estimate the rate at which the grime was leaching out. Once it seemed sufficiently leached, he would wipe it with a cotton pad, then wrap a clean piece of cotton around the needle to reach deep into the crack and wipe it bit by bit.

After wiping, he would clean it once and take it outside to air dry. He let the acetone evaporate naturally while allowing the water-soaked wood to air dry slowly, ensuring it didn't shrink too violently and create new cracks.

"It's fortunate that this wood isn't particularly hard, so air drying doesn't take too long. If it were hardwood, it would take forever..."

Softwoods like pine and Chinese Fir only take three to six months to air dry. Hardwoods like sandalwood or Golden Phoebe Wood might not even be fully air-dried in a year.

If it were something like the Golden Phoebe Wood pillars in the Forbidden City, those giant trees with diameters over a meter, it would be even more incredible; you wouldn't even think about it for three to five years.

Even though this Ink Marker had only been washed a few times and didn't need to be air-dried for over half a year like freshly harvested timber—otherwise, it would crack immediately—it still wasn't something that could be finished in an hour or two.

Since the wood needed time to air dry, and he was idle anyway, Shen Le turned back to study the Devil's Work Ball.

As for the material of the Devil's Work Ball, the Forestry Research Institute had finished their tests and provided the first feedback. The answer was simple, consisting of only two words:

Jujube Wood.

"Alright, one is a jujube tree, and the other is also a jujube tree..."

Shen Le muttered as he searched the mansion, but as expected, he couldn't find any ready-to-use Jujube Wood.

The workbench he had dragged over and the door latch at the entrance of the mansion—these components he had pinned his hopes on—were not made of Jujube Wood and couldn't be sawed into pieces to repair the Ink Marker.

He turned to the all-powerful Taobao for help...

"No way, how does Taobao even have lightning-struck Jujube Wood? And it's already sold 100+? How is this stuff mass-produced?!"

Shen Le struggled with this for a long time without finding an answer. He scrolled down further and was surprised to see a question in the comments:

"Is this struck by nuclear power? Hydroelectric is too 'yin,' the effect isn't good!"

This... everyone's imagination is truly wild...

"What is nuclear power?"

With a weight on his knee, Xiao Ling jumped up again, her eyes shining as she stared at the computer screen. After watching for a long time, she even jumped onto the desk and reached out to paw at his mouse:

"What do you want to buy? Are you buying clothes for me?"

Shen Le sighed, opened his shopping cart on Taobao, and pulled up the page to show her:

"Option one: buy an 8-centimeter-long jujube wood dowel with a 2-centimeter diameter, then carve it into a bead by hand. Cost: 8 yuan. Time required... I don't think I could carve a sphere in three days."

"Option two: buy the wood for 8 yuan, then buy a miniature wood lathe for 1,258 yuan. It's a one-time investment; after that, I can turn any wooden object I want without having to do it by hand."

"Option three: buy a string of 1.8-centimeter diameter jujube wood prayer beads for 30 yuan. Xiao Ling, tell me, which one should I choose?"

"Obviously, pick the expensive one!" Little Puppet blurted out without a second thought. Shen Le rubbed his temples in annoyance:

"But if I pick the expensive one, I won't have any money left to buy you clothes for the time being!"

"That won't do!... Let's go with the prayer beads then!"

Fine, fine... It's a good thing she didn't pick the first one. Otherwise, I'd be forced to buy the clothes anyway, and it wouldn't matter how much I worked myself to the bone—

Talk about a truly "filial" display!